The best show on television did not disappoint this week as the finale quickly approaches! I had been anticipating that everything was building towards a huge climax in the action for a few weeks now and finally, FINALLY IT HAPPENED! We got our protagonist back, a few surprising deaths occurred, and there was a shocking twist to end it all. Let’s get down to it!

THE CAT’S IN THE CRADLE: Richard and Bad Cooper have made their way to Twin Peaks and are out driving in the woods. They don’t even have the car radio on, so you know this is serious business. They stop the car and get out at a specific location, and Cooper tells Richard that this is the ‘place’ he has been looking for. He has been given three sets of coordinates and two of those match this exact location. We know that Cooper received numbers from Philip Jeffries, Diane, and Ray in the past few weeks. I can’t help but wonder who gave him the coordinate set that DIDN’T match. Cooper sends Richard over to the top of the rock to investigate this location, and when Richard finally arrives there he is met by a massive, blinding wave of otherworldly electricity, killing him instantly. Cooper just surveys the scene, says a quick and emotionless goodbye to his now-dead son (confirming that Richard’s parents are indeed Audrey and Bad Cooper, which we have all been speculating about for a while), and sends a text that reads ‘ALL’ before driving off to places unknown. Jerry Horne witnesses all of this from a distance through his binoculars. But since he is looking through the binoculars THE WRONG WAY, he only gets a faint view of the proceedings. How high is this guy anyway? What kind of weed has he been smoking that has kept him high for days and made him hallucinate on top of it? To hell with Sparkle, I want some of what he’s smoking. Oh wait…I don’t want to be out of my mind for days on end, although I suppose it would still be more fun than going to work.

So what really happened here? I’m imagining that the matching sets of coordinates that Bad Cooper received were somehow just a trick meant to kill him. But they definitely led SOMEWHERE special because look what happened to Richard. The text he sent demanding the rest of the coordinates is received by Diane later in the episode. Maybe she’s the only one with the full, accurate set of numbers? One thing we know is that this rock in the woods is not the place Bad Cooper is looking for, or else he wouldn’t have texted Diane for more numbers and then driven away so quickly. I’m just a little bit confused by all of this but HEY, it wouldn’t be the first time that happened in this show.

A TULPA IS JUST A FRIEND YOU HAVEN’T MET: Diane sits at the hotel bar (she can always be found wherever drinks are being served) and receives the ‘ALL’ text from Bad Cooper. Hold on tight, friends, because we are just about to witness THE GREAT DIANE BREAKDOWN OF 2017. She starts shaking and freaking out and I can’t even believe she has enough control over her body to type the full coordinates into her phone and send them to Bad Cooper. We see that she has a gun in her purse, and she starts to slowly make her way up to the FBI conference room, looking unhinged and almost possessed. That creepy ‘American Woman’ remix song starts playing again and by now I am totally convinced that she is going to barge into the FBI room and just start laying waste to Gordon and Tammy and Albert. I had genuine fear grip me as I tried to imagine what a bullet-ridden and bleeding Gordon Cole would look like. THE TERROR WAS REAL. She stands outside the door and somehow Gordon knows she is there, even though she doesn’t knock or make any noise. She enters the room and I breathed a sigh of relief because she didn’t walk in with her gun blazing. She sits down and starts recounting the events of the last time she saw Cooper at her apartment, which was about 3 or 4 years after he ‘turned’. Diane’s story: He entered her house without knocking, started asking her a bunch of questions about FBI business, kissed her (which is when she noticed that something was very wrong about him) and then raped her. She tells of how afterwards he took her to the convenience store but before she can say any more, she starts muttering about how she is ‘in the sheriff’s station’ and about sending the coordinates. She starts pleading ‘I’m not me! I’m not me!’ and then YEP, SHE PULLS OUT THE GUN. Fortunately Albert is quick to react and shoots her, followed by Tammy getting in a few shots as well. Diane, now dead (I think), suddenly gets sucked out of the room and just shoots off into parts unknown. Albert seems to be in shock over all of this, Tammy remarks that Diane must have been a tulpa like the woman in the first Blue Rose case, and Gordon just sits there with the same look on his face that a person would have if they were served the wrong order at Applebee’s. Gordon is pretty damn unshakable.

Diane turns up in the Lodge, where she sits rather comfortably on a chair and listens to Mike tell her how she was manufactured. She responds that she already knew about being manufactured, then her face cracks open and smoke pours out of her face-crack and her essence is reduced to a small, golden pearl (much like what happened to the manufactured Dougie Jones earlier on).

My take on these scenes: When Bad Cooper took Diane to the convenience store, that’s when the ‘real Diane’ died. Her tulpa was created there, and I’m not exactly sure how this tulpa thing works but somehow parts of the original Diane survived inside of the tulpa. That’s the only way to explain her confession to the FBI and ‘I’m not me!’ Bad Cooper used her to have someone on the inside and it worked out well for him because I have a strong feeling that the coordinates Diane sent are the ones that are going to lead to the place that he is looking for. Laura Dern gives a masterful performance in her final scenes, as she pretty much has the whole show. When she is onscreen, there is just no way you can take your eyes off her — she commands attention. In a just world, she would be nominated for an Emmy but the Academy does not seem to like David Lynch very much and someone from The Big Bang Theory will probably win that award and awards are kind of stupid and pointless anyway so I suppose I can live with her eventual exclusion. If I am wrong and she is nominated next year, I will buy a Coke for everyone who is reading this right now. Just please specify if you want original Coke or cherry or diet and leave it in the comments section.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO: Dougie is laying in a hospital bed in a coma, surrounded by Janey-E and Sonny Jim and Bushnell Mullins (I wonder if my boss would visit me if I was in a coma…). The Mitchum Brothers arrive with their harem of women, bringing finger sandwiches and a ridiculously elaborate flower arrangement. Everyone commiserates over Dougie’s situation, and the Brothers tell Janey-E that they are going to stock her house full of food as a gesture of kindness. How do they know what kind of food her family likes? What if she is a vegetarian and they bring over a bunch of steak? I really have to stop overthinking TV shows and movies…

CUT TO Chantal the Slut and Hutch The Redneck, disguised as painters of some sort, who are parked across the street from Dougie’s house. Hutch muses about one of his dead friends while Chantal feeds her Cheetos addiction. They watch as the Vegas FBI comes around looking for Dougie, then the Mitchum Brothers and their Caravan of Hospitality show up to deliver food. While the Brothers are inside stocking the Jones’ kitchen, a man in a Zawaski Accounting car pulls up in front of Hutch’s van. Zawaski gets out and starts complaining about the van parked in his driveway, which only results in a bunch of yelling and a ‘Fuck off!’ from Chantal. Zawaski gets angry and revs his car up, ramming against the front of the van. Chantal quickly tires of this disturbance and pulls out her gun and starts shooting at him. He gets shot in the arm and runs for cover behind his car. Chantal and Hutch start to speed away while Zawaski stands up, pulls out his OWN gun, and starts riddling the van with bullets. Chantal and Hutch are gunned down in a grand, epic style worthy of a Tarantino film. Meanwhile, an FBI car has been parked nearby and is watching all of this occur, but they DO NOTHING. Isn’t the FBI supposed to like, GET INVOLVED DURING A SHOOTOUT? Instead they wait until everything is over before they come out of hiding and arrest the only man standing in the aftermath. Go figure.

Back in Dougie’s hospital room, Bushnell hears a strange ringing tone (the same sort of sound that has been disrupting the Great Northern Hotel recently) and goes out into the hallway to investigate. A vision of Mike from the Lodge begins to appear on one of the chairs near the bed. Suddenly, Dale Cooper sits up in bed. NO, THIS IS NOT DOUGIE JONES ANYMORE. It’s Agent Dale Cooper, making his first appearance in the physical world in over 25 years. IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING? Yes it is. Mike tells Cooper that his doppelgänger is still on the loose, then gives him the owl ring (I’m still not completely sure what this ring is useful for but it sure gets around a lot). Cooper asks if Mike ‘has the seed’ and then asks if he can ‘make another one’. He pulls out a strand of his own hair and gives it to Mike before the Lodge vision fades away. I’m assuming that Cooper wants Mike to make another replica of Dougie Jones but how does that all work? Also, the original Dougie was a total loser who gambled and drank heavily and cheated on his wife with prostitutes (I’m sure he got waaaay more than two rides). Why would Janey-E want that Dougie back? She seems perfectly happy being with Zombie Dougie. Maybe Mike can re-animate a random corpse to be her husband. The headless body of Garland Briggs would probably be a more upstanding spouse than the original Dougie Jones has been.

Janey-E and Sonny Jim come into the room and see Cooper sitting up in in bed and much rejoicing occurs. Cooper wastes no time in getting down to business. He borrows Bushnell’s gun, sets up a casino meeting with the Mitchum Brothers and a subsequent plane to Spokane, Washington. During all of this, he even has time to scarf down a few finger sandwiches and receive a clean bill of health from a doctor (All this doctor did was check his heartbeat for a few seconds. REALLY? Because it normally takes about two hours to get released from a hospital under even the best circumstances. And Dougie was in a COMA five minutes earlier. AAHHGGHH!) As he gives his thanks and says his goodbye to Bushnell, the Twin Peaks music starts playing in the background and I have to admit that I was grinning from ear-to-ear for the next five minutes straight. He’s back! He’s the FBI! He’s 100 percent! It’s all really happening! This is it, baby, we’re finally going home!

At the casino, Cooper says goodbye to his sort-of family, and Janey-E can sense that this man is not her husband. She embraces him and tells him ‘Whoever you are, thank you’ as he promises her that her husband will return (let’s all hope that this returning Dougie Jones is new and improved, for Janey-E’s sake because she really is an exemplary wife). Then it’s off to the airport with the Mitchum Brothers! Cooper assures them that they will be welcome at the Twin Peaks sheriff’s station because he has seen firsthand that they have ‘hearts of gold’. I find it amusing that the Pink Ladies are coming along to Twin Peaks. Can we please just get a scene where Lucy reacts to these three women entering the station? That would be amazing.

ROADHOUSE BLUES: Tonight’s Roadhouse music is introduced as Edward Louis Severson, but it’s really just Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, dressed like a hipster hobo. As he sings, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT BUT AUDREY AND CHARLIE SHOW UP AT THE BAR. Her marital drama really does exist in the real world. It’s not a coma fantasy or some sort of strange hallucination she’s having in a mental hospital (more on that in a minute). Audrey and Charlie drink martinis (he toasts ‘to us’ and she toasts ‘to Billy’, haha what a wonderful bitch she has turned out to be!) and that’s when it happens. Crazy Old Man MC announces ‘Audrey’s Dance’ and the crowd clears the floor to make room for Miss Horne to recreate her RR Diner sway-down from 25 years ago. At this point, I was conflicted. Of course it was fantastic to see Audrey dance again — I’m only human, after all. But calling it ‘Audrey’s Dance’ and having it come out of nowhere just seemed like a bunch of fanservice from a show that has avoided nearly every bit of fanservice for the past 16 hours. It just felt really ‘off’ to be watching this scene unfold. Just when I had convinced my analytical brain to shut up and enjoy the dance, some guy runs across the dance floor screaming ‘Monique! That’s my wife, asshole!’ and then pummels the asshole who is with his wife. Chaos ensues, someone tells to call the police, and Audrey runs back to Charlie, begging to be taken out of there. Suddenly, BAM! Audrey is standing in front of a mirror in a white room, freaking out and shaking while the buzz of electricity gets louder and louder as the episode ends. WOW! I won’t even speculate on what is going on with Audrey because we just don’t have enough information yet to discern where she is or what is going on. But one thing is certain — something very wrong has happened to her. How this affects the finale remains to be seen.

MORE THINGS THAT HAPPENED:

— It was odd to see Richard Horne to be disposed of so quickly. I was king of hoping that we would see a little family reunion with Audrey, or at least see him suffer a little for his various crimes. Instead he just gets electrocuted and it’s over in a few seconds.

— The Mitchum Brothers had the two best lines of the show, hands down. Rodney’s response to his brother’s concerns about the neighborhood shotgun fight — ‘People are under a lot of stress, Bradley’. And later in the casino, as they watch ‘Dougie’ take his family aside to say goodbye, we get Bradley musing ‘Ya know, Dougie’s talking with a lot of assurance’. These brothers need their own show. Really.

— ‘I’m in the sheriff’s station’. These were some of Diane’s final words. Surely she is referring to Naido, right? And I’m convinced that Naido is Judy, if only because who else could Judy be at this point?

— What did everyone think about that brief scene of Gordon Cole surrounded by the humming and buzzing of the electronic equipment in the FBI’s hotel room? It was there and then it was over just like that.

— Chantal’s Cheetos addiction is very scary. No one should ever flip out like that over a bag of snack food. And if she likes Cheetos so much, why doesn’t she buy the large bag? Those tiny bags are only good for school lunches and light snacking.

That’s it for this week! There are two hours left, just one super-sized episode and that’s it. I can’t begin to imagine how all of this will be wrapped up. But if you’re expecting a nice, happy ending that ends with the cast holding hands in a circle and smiling, I have a very strong feeling you’re going to be disappointed. Somehow I believe that this tale is going to end a little more ambiguously than that…but we will see. Hang loose, Haoles! I’ll see you next week for my final review of The Return!